美国国家公共电台 NPR War Studies Suggest A Concussion Leaves The Brain Vulnerable To PTSD

War Studies Suggest A Concussion¹ Leaves The Brain Vulnerable To PTSD 

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And in Your Health this morning, we're learning about the link between concussions³ and post-traumatic stress disorder⁵. For a while now, researchers have suspected that even a mild brain injury can make a person more vulnerable to PTSD. And the link became much clearer when scientists began studying troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. Here's NPR's Jon Hamilton.

JON HAMILTON, BYLINE⁶: Scientists who study PTSD have been learning a lot from people like Charles Mayer. In 2010, Mayer was on patrol in an Army Humvee near Baghdad. Then a roadside bomb went off.

CHARLES MAYER: I was unconscious, you know, for several minutes. So I know the story from the people that, you know, that dragged me out, my buddies⁷.

HAMILTON: The blast fractured a bone in Mayer's spine⁸. It also affected⁹ his memory.

MAYER: But I didn't really realize the effects that it would cause, like, cognitively¹⁰, so to speak.

HAMILTON: Mayer's thinking was impaired¹¹. That became painfully clear when he got out of the Army in 2012.

MAYER: Two weeks later, I started school. And a simple math equation, like 120 times seven, where I previously¹³ would do that in my head very easily, I all of a sudden couldn't do that.

HAMILTON: And Mayer had a bigger problem. His time in Iraq had left him with an uncontrollable fear of improvised¹⁴ explosive devices, or IEDs.

MAYER: When I would walk down the street, I would walk away from trash piles 'cause that's often how they would hide IEDs. I stayed away from large crowds.

HAMILTON: Eventually, Mayer went to the VA for help. An exam confirmed that he had PTSD. And Mayer says it was bad.

MAYER: I would get severe panic attacks - and to the point, you know, so severe where I would be - have to go to the hospital, you know, 'cause I would feel like I'm actually having a heart attack.

HAMILTON: The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan produced thousands of Charles Mayers. First they got a concussion. Then they got PTSD. And Dewleen Baker¹⁵ has seen many of these veterans. She's a psychiatrist¹⁶ at the University of California, San Diego, who also runs a PTSD clinic at the local VA Medical Center. Baker remembers a time early in the wars when she began seeing more and more returning troops with symptoms of both PTSD and brain injury.

DEWLEEN BAKER: We had people who were looking very miserable¹⁷ when they came back and reporting a blast injury and some difficulty thinking.

HAMILTON: Baker kept asking herself, was the PTSD just from the emotional trauma⁴ of combat, or did a concussion alter the brain in a way that amplified¹⁸ fear and anxiety?

BAKER: I could easily diagnose the PTSD. But I found it very, very difficult to tease apart the contribution of traumatic brain injury, what was going on with their cognition.

HAMILTON: So Baker and a team of researchers began studying more than 1,600 Marines from Camp Pendleton. The Marines had been assessed before deploying¹⁹ to Iraq or Afghanistan and then again three months after returning.

BAKER: At one point, we got this battalion²⁰ that went to Helmand Province in Afghanistan. And literally²¹ 50 percent of them were complaining of blast exposures and symptoms, and I got concerned.

HAMILTON: Baker had reason to worry. The study found that Marines who experienced a traumatic brain injury, or TBI, were much more likely to develop post-traumatic stress disorder.

BAKER: TBI doubled the rate of PTSD in some cases.

HAMILTON: But why? There was no easy way to answer that question in people. But a team of scientists at the University of California, Los Angeles, had been studying rats. Michael Fanselow says the team focused on the amygdala, an area of the brain that processes information coming from the senses.

MICHAEL FANSELOW: The amygdala takes the sensory²² information and decides, should I learn to be afraid? Should I give a fear response? What should I do in this situation?

HAMILTON: Fanselow did an experiment. It compared healthy rats with rats that had experienced a traumatic brain injury. He says all of the rats received a type of behavioral conditioning known to induce fear.

FANSELOW: What happened in the animals that experienced a TBI is that this fear response that they learned during the situation was exaggerated. It was much greater than it normally would be.

HAMILTON: And Fanselow says the brain injury changed more than the rats' behavior. There were obvious changes in the amygdala.

FANSELOW: So it seemed like the amygdala was geared to really be able to strongly learn new fear information. And we think that that's the way TBI has of increasing your susceptibility to post-traumatic stress.

HAMILTON: Back at UC, San Diego, psychiatrist Dewleen Baker had come to a conclusion. If brain injuries really do change the brain's fear circuitry, there should be some way to detect that change in people. So she teamed up with Mingxiong Huang, a biomedical physicist²³ in the radiology department. Huang had been using a technology that measures electrical activity in the brain. It's called magnetoencephalography, or MEG for short.

MINGXIONG HUANG: And you come in over here.

HAMILTON: OK.

Huang shows me the room where his team used MEG to scan the brains of 84 people. Some were service members. Some were civilians²⁴. But they'd all experienced a brain injury. Huang points to a chair beneath a helmet-like hood²⁵ designed to detect brain signals. He says what the scans from this device revealed was intriguing²⁶. People with brain injuries often have too much activity in the amygdala and not enough in an area that moderate's emotional reactions. Huang says these people appear to have brains that are likely to overreact when something frightening happens.

HUANG: Just like when you're driving a car, there's a brake. And you have an engine, but you need a brake. But in the case of PTSD and driving a car, the brake's not fully¹² functioning.

HAMILTON: Now Dewleen Baker is getting ready to expand her study of Marines. She wants to scan the brains of about 200 combat veterans, including some with both TBI and PTSD. Baker will have help on this project from Charles Mayer, the former soldier whose college career was interrupted by PTSD. After getting treatment, Mayer was able to finish his undergraduate degree.

MAYER: I actually graduated early (laughter), believe it or not.

HAMILTON: That was in December. Then Mayer started looking for a job. He wanted something that would let him study the problems that had affected his own brain.

MAYER: I looked up the psychiatrists²⁷ that were doing research that I really cared about, and Dr. Baker was definitely up there.

HAMILTON: Baker hired him. Their research will focus on veterans, but the findings could also help identify civilians who suffered a brain injury that makes them vulnerable to PTSD. Jon Hamilton, NPR News.

1 concussion   

n.脑震荡；震动

参考例句：

• He was carried off the field with slight concussion.他因轻微脑震荡给抬离了现场。
• She suffers from brain concussion.她得了脑震荡。

2 browser   

n.浏览者

参考例句：

• View edits in a web browser.在浏览器中看编辑的效果。
• I think my browser has a list of shareware links.我想在浏览器中会有一系列的共享软件链接。

3 concussions   

n.震荡( concussion的名词复数 )；脑震荡；冲击；震动

参考例句：

• People who have concussions often trouble thinking or remembering. 患脑震荡的人通常存在思考和记忆障碍。 来自互联网
• Concussions also make a person feel very tired or angry. 脑震荡也会使人感觉疲倦或愤怒。 来自互联网

4 trauma   

n.外伤，精神创伤

参考例句：

• Counselling is helping him work through this trauma.心理辅导正帮助他面对痛苦。
• The phobia may have its root in a childhood trauma.恐惧症可能源于童年时期的创伤。

5 disorder   

n.紊乱，混乱；骚动，骚乱；疾病，失调

参考例句：

• When returning back,he discovered the room to be in disorder.回家后，他发现屋子里乱七八糟。
• It contained a vast number of letters in great disorder.里面七零八落地装着许多信件。

6 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

7 buddies   

n.密友( buddy的名词复数 )；同伴；弟兄；（用于称呼男子，常带怒气）家伙v.（如密友、战友、伙伴、弟兄般）交往( buddy的第三人称单数 )；做朋友；亲近（…）；伴护艾滋病人

参考例句：

• We became great buddies. 我们成了非常好的朋友。 来自辞典例句
• The two of them have become great buddies. 他们俩成了要好的朋友。 来自辞典例句

8 spine   

n.脊柱，脊椎；(动植物的)刺；书脊

参考例句：

• He broke his spine in a fall from a horse.他从马上跌下摔断了脊梁骨。
• His spine developed a slight curve.他的脊柱有点弯曲。

9 affected   

adj.不自然的，假装的

参考例句：

• She showed an affected interest in our subject.她假装对我们的课题感到兴趣。
• His manners are affected.他的态度不自然。

10 cognitively   

参考例句：

• Cognitively,man,the subject of cognition,must classify and categorize the objects. 从认知学角度来看 ，作为认知主体的人对于认知对象必须进行分类和范畴化。 来自互联网
• Cognitively, reference can be studied along with information processing of human mind. 从认知的角度看，要研究人类思维的信息处理过程。 来自互联网

11 impaired   

adj.受损的；出毛病的；有（身体或智力）缺陷的v.损害，削弱( impair的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• Much reading has impaired his vision. 大量读书损害了他的视力。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》
• His hearing is somewhat impaired. 他的听觉已受到一定程度的损害。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

12 fully   

adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地

参考例句：

• The doctor asked me to breathe in,then to breathe out fully.医生让我先吸气，然后全部呼出。
• They soon became fully integrated into the local community.他们很快就完全融入了当地人的圈子。

13 previously   

adv.以前，先前（地）

参考例句：

• The bicycle tyre blew out at a previously damaged point.自行车胎在以前损坏过的地方又爆开了。
• Let me digress for a moment and explain what had happened previously.让我岔开一会儿，解释原先发生了什么。

14 improvised   

a.即席而作的,即兴的

参考例句：

• He improvised a song about the football team's victory. 他即席创作了一首足球队胜利之歌。
• We improvised a tent out of two blankets and some long poles. 我们用两条毛毯和几根长竿搭成一个临时帐蓬。

15 baker   

n.面包师

参考例句：

• The baker bakes his bread in the bakery.面包师在面包房内烤面包。
• The baker frosted the cake with a mixture of sugar and whites of eggs.面包师在蛋糕上撒了一层白糖和蛋清的混合料。

16 psychiatrist   

n.精神病专家；精神病医师

参考例句：

• He went to a psychiatrist about his compulsive gambling.他去看精神科医生治疗不能自拔的赌瘾。
• The psychiatrist corrected him gently.精神病医师彬彬有礼地纠正他。

17 miserable   

adj.悲惨的，痛苦的；可怜的，糟糕的

参考例句：

• It was miserable of you to make fun of him.你取笑他，这是可耻的。
• Her past life was miserable.她过去的生活很苦。

18 amplified   

放大，扩大( amplify的过去式和过去分词 )； 增强； 详述

参考例句：

• He amplified on his remarks with drawings and figures. 他用图表详细地解释了他的话。
• He amplified the whole course of the incident. 他详述了事件的全过程。

19 deploying   

（尤指军事行动）使展开( deploy的现在分词 )； 施展； 部署； 有效地利用

参考例句：

• Provides support for developing and deploying distributed, component-based applications. 为开发和部署基于组件的分布式应用程序提供支持。
• Advertisement, publishing, repair, and install-on-demand are all available when deploying your application. 在部署应用程序时提供公布、发布、修复和即需即装功能。

20 battalion   

n.营；部队；大队(的人)

参考例句：

• The town was garrisoned by a battalion.该镇由一营士兵驻守。
• At the end of the drill parade,the battalion fell out.操练之后，队伍解散了。

21 literally   

adv.照字面意义，逐字地；确实

参考例句：

• He translated the passage literally.他逐字逐句地翻译这段文字。
• Sometimes she would not sit down till she was literally faint.有时候，她不走到真正要昏厥了，决不肯坐下来。

22 sensory   

adj.知觉的，感觉的，知觉器官的

参考例句：

• Human powers of sensory discrimination are limited.人类感官分辨能力有限。
• The sensory system may undergo long-term adaptation in alien environments.感觉系统对陌生的环境可能经过长时期才能适应。

23 physicist   

n.物理学家，研究物理学的人

参考例句：

• He is a physicist of the first rank.他是一流的物理学家。
• The successful physicist never puts on airs.这位卓有成就的物理学家从不摆架子。

24 civilians   

平民，百姓( civilian的名词复数 )； 老百姓

参考例句：

• the bloody massacre of innocent civilians 对无辜平民的血腥屠杀
• At least 300 civilians are unaccounted for after the bombing raids. 遭轰炸袭击之后，至少有300名平民下落不明。

25 hood   

n.头巾，兜帽，覆盖；v.罩上，以头巾覆盖

参考例句：

• She is wearing a red cloak with a hood.她穿着一件红色带兜帽的披风。
• The car hood was dented in.汽车的发动机罩已凹了进去。

26 intriguing   

adj.有趣的；迷人的v.搞阴谋诡计(intrigue的现在分词)；激起…的好奇心

参考例句：

• These discoveries raise intriguing questions. 这些发现带来了非常有趣的问题。
• It all sounds very intriguing. 这些听起来都很有趣。 来自《简明英汉词典》

27 psychiatrists   

n.精神病专家，精神病医生( psychiatrist的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• They are psychiatrists in good standing. 他们是合格的精神病医生。 来自辞典例句
• Some psychiatrists have patients who grow almost alarmed at how congenial they suddenly feel. 有些精神分析学家发现，他们的某些病人在突然感到惬意的时候几乎会兴奋起来。 来自名作英译部分